… und warum Adobe ihren Flash-Player nicht offenlegen muss.
In seinem aktuellen Blog Post schreibt ‘Command Line Warriors’ über seine Prognose für Desktop Technologien in 2007.
Unter anderem über den Adobe Flash Player. So steht dort, dass Gnash in 2006 zum Standard Flash-Player geworden ist, da es der offizielle Adobe Player bis jetzt nur Flash bis zur Version 7 unterstützt, während Flash Version 9 schon lange Standard ist. Gnash hingegen unterstützt auch Flash Version 9. Des weiteren fährt ‘Command Line Warriors’ fort, dass es bei Adobe kein gänzlich neues Flash Format (Flash Version 10) geben wird, weil man es sich nicht leisten kann, die Inhalteanbieter zu überfordern. So kann Adobe maximal alle zwei Jahre eine neue Version bringen, genug Zeit, in der Gnash aufschließen kann.
Und nun kommt der interessante Teil: Weil Gnash aufschließen wird, wird Adobe, damit ihr Player weiterhin unter Linux genutzt wird, den Quellcode freigeben müssen. So wie bei Java geschehen, laut Autor.
Nun, ich habe da ein paar Anmerkungen:
Der Adobe Flash Player ist Closed-Source Software, daher mag es sein, dass heutige Distributionen Gnash standardmäßig installieren. Aber ich musste feststellen, dass Gnash immmer noch Alpha-Software ist.Es gibt noch zuviele Webseiten, wo Gnash fehlerhaft oder auch gar nicht funktioniert. Daher würde es mich wundern, wenn der Linux Nutzer bei Gnash bleibt. Ein funktionierender Adobe Player Version 7 ist besser als ein nicht funktionierender Gnash Player. Und am Rand sei noch erwähnt, dass es eine Beta-Version von Adobe Flash-Player 9 gibt, die auch schon richtig gut funktioniert (besser als Gnash).
Es ist aber richtig, dass Gnash – wenn die Entwickler bei der Stange bleiben – zum Adobe Flash Player aufschließen werden.
Falsch ist aber, dass Adobe mittelfristig den Quellcode freigeben muss. Adobe Interesse an ihrem Player ist, dass möglichst alle PC Flash abspielen können. Am Player selber verdient Adobe keinen einzigen Cent. Und wenn es für Linux eine gut funktionierenden Open-Source Player ala Gnash gibt, dann haben die Leute bei Adobe bestimmt kein Problem, Entwicklungskosten einzusparen und ihren Player für Linux einzustampfen.
Und damit steht Adobe anders da, als Sun mit Java, die Angst hatten, dass die Java-Spezifikation verwässert wird. Allgemein, wird es wohl wenige weitere Java-Fälle geben, man sollte lieber die Hersteller von Closed-Source Software zu mehr Kooperation drängen. Davon hätte die Linux Welt weit mehr.
Januar 9, 2007 um 3:44 |
Flash is less than Java.
(my attempt to use the less than sign ended my attempt to post above).
Thankyou very much for visiting my blog, as far as I know this is the first time my blog has been discussed in German! Very cool.
Will Adobe open-source the Flash player? The answer is: follow the money!
My point is that there will come a tipping point within 1 to 3 years, where Adobe will face a choice. This tipping point will come when two prerequisites are fulfilled. Firstly, when Gnash makes a stable release and it gets widely distributed, such as being included by default in some major distributions. Secondly, when it appears that Gnash have figured out how to support Flash 9. Whether it works, or works as well as Adobe Flash is slightly irrelevant here.
Think about the Web between 1993 and today, is TCP/IP and HTML still the backbone of the web, yes it is. Does anyone still use Mosaic to surf the web? No they do not.
Adobe’s choice is between keeping the Flash player proprietary or keeping control of the market. They cannot do both. If they lose the market then they lose their status as the leading vendor for vector graphics multimedia authoring programs, and thus they lose money. Adobe may take it on the nose and decline gracefully, but I do not think they will.
So the decisive factor is how do Adobe sell most copies of their Authoring Tool? I think they will sell most by keeping the ability to control the development of one ubiquitous player. Whether it is ubiquitous and proprietary or ubiquitous and open source does not matter so much to them, the major concern for Adobe is that it is ubiquitous.
If Flash becomes merely a protocol, merely a file format, then it is no longer a product. Every embedded manufacturer will have their own client (gnash based or not) and other media player companies such as Real or whoever may pick it up and add support it alongside other vector graphics formats. You do not make billions from generic formats. Look at Tim Berners Lee, he did not make much at all from the WWW.
Adobe’s need for its own Flash player to be ubiquitous gets even greater if Microsoft gets anywhere with their Microsoft Expression Blend thing and if anyone actually makes content with it. If so then Adobe’s sales of its multimedia authoring program could decrease dramatically because it will then make less difference which format you push through the pipe, the end-users will not be able to tell the difference.
So Gnash will take Adobe to the tipping point, but it might well be competition with Microsoft which pushes them off.
Januar 9, 2007 um 9:35 |
Hey,
it’s fun that this blogs gets read by english guys.
For me the question is, if Gnash is reverse engineering just the Adobe flash player or the whole flash format aka SWF. First option may be easier, latter the better / more powerful solution.
Reverse engineering the player:
Now it is easy to playback flash and there be more player beside gnash, which supports flash (e.g. Real). They all make flash more popular, because ubiquitous. But there will be still only one flash-creation tool provided by Adobe. They will make even more money and still control the spezification. If they feel strong enough, they can also make extra money by licensing the format (just like MPEG).
Reverse engineering the format:
Now it is easy to create a player and workaround every bug, that sits inside the format. Also everybody can then extend the format and implement support in their player (just like Micrsoft’s IE did with HTML). In fact it is not as easy, because Flash is not as easy to create, but Adobe will most likely have lost control above the format. They may still provide the best / most popular flash-creation tool (like MS Office still is for the office world) and still make good money, but there may also come up hard competition. In this situation it make sense to provide the best player (even if they had to opensource, but still supervising the player) to fight alternative players with flash extensions, so that there flash-creation tool creates the best flash code.
So they don’t have to keep control of the player, they have to keep control of the format.